


Evening Snuggles

by crimsonswirls, koganphrancis



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Shameless Reverse Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 14:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9446342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonswirls/pseuds/crimsonswirls, https://archiveofourown.org/users/koganphrancis/pseuds/koganphrancis
Summary: Ian was so distracted by sex with a woman that he really didn’t think about contraception. Neither did she.Art by crimsonswirls (aka towardthegrace on Tumblr)





	

 

 

 

The girl on the train got up and stood in front of Ian, holding on to the bar next to his seat. She leaned over, letting Ian look all the way down her top had he wanted to, but he just kept his eyes on her eyes.

“Wanna get off?” she said with a smile.

Ian gulped. “Uh, what?” he mumbled.

“Mine’s the next stop-wanna get off with me?” Her eyes flickered and she licked her lips. “It’s about a three minute walk to my place…you could come.” She smiled again.

Ian took a deep breath and nodded. What the hell, it was time he found out for himself if Caleb and Lip were right about this not being a big deal if you weren’t with your preference.

They got off the train at the next stop and the girl took his hand. “I’m Nichole,” she purred.

“Uh, Ian. Hi?” He had no idea what he was supposed to say or do. The girl held onto his hand, practically dragging him to her apartment building. It was a hot day and Ian was feeling headachy and disoriented, he wished he had a bottle of water with him.

They walked up an outer flight of stairs into her building, and then up two more full flights of stairs to get to the third floor. Her apartment was small and she didn’t waste time showing him the place. She brought him right into the bedroom and shut the door behind them, clicking the lock on the doorknob.

The room was cluttered and there was a cloying, sweet odor to it-it reminded Ian of when Mandy would drag him into Victoria’s Secret at the mall years ago-a bunch of different perfumes all mixed together. The room was hot and stuffy too. Ian noticed that Nichole had dropped his hand, and when he finished his brief look around the four walls and settled his gaze back on her, she was already naked. His eyebrows rose in some alarm.

“Come on, Ian, let’s do this. I’ve been wanting you since you were checking me out.”

Ian furrowed his brow, but then shrugged and started taking off his clothes. He was a little shy about pulling down his boxers, he couldn’t remember if any female had ever seen him naked outside of the nurse practitioner that had performed his physical for his EMT job. He managed to get them off and just let them drop on top of the rest of his clothes that were already on the floor.

“Christ, you are a big boy, aren’t you?” Nichole said with admiration. “Good thing I have some Magnums…” She opened a drawer in the small table next to her bed and fished out a condom from a little stockpile she had stored in there.

“I have one in my wall…” Ian started to say, but Nichole tossed the condom at him and he bobbled the catch, it slipped through his long fingers and he flailed his hands down towards the floor trying to grab it still, but Nichole interrupted him.

“Leave it till we need it-I can’t wait to get my mouth on that peen,” she said.

Ian suppressed a shudder. Peen? Really?

Nichole walked over to where he was standing and pushed him, trying to get him onto the bed. Ian sat, and then she was pushing on his shoulders, so he scooted back and lay down. She climbed on top of him and raked her hands down his chest (drawing blood, he discovered later- her nails were like talons) and she then she grabbed his cock in both hands and started wringing it like she was trying to squeeze all the water out of a twisted washcloth. Her nails where sinking into him there and it was very unpleasant for Ian. She brought her mouth down over the head of his penis and started slurping noisily. She was wearing some sort of sticky lip gloss that prevented her lips from gliding smoothly and Ian couldn’t relax and get into some sort of rhythm with what she was trying to do. He wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably and tried not to focus on the sensations his dick was being put through.    

After a few minutes of that, Nichole told him, “I’m so wet, feel,” and grabbed his hand and brought it down to her crotch.

“Uh, wow, like a rain forest,” Ian said, wondering if he was supposed to compliment her or what.

“Lick my pussy,” Nichole said, crawling off him and flipping over so they could trade places.

“Uh, okay…”

Ian tried his best, and Nichole seemed happy enough; she was thrashing and punching her hands into the bed and moaning like a porn star. Ian had no idea what he was doing, he was trying to find something to put his mouth around, but his fingers just kept sinking into wet flesh so he poked his tongue in and kept it moving, but then he got a hair on his tongue and almost gagged, and when he tried to move his face back to try to swipe it off, he inhaled by mistake and the hair got lodged in his throat. He was trying desperately not to start having a coughing fit when Nichole gave him his next order.

“I could come right now, but wait. Get in me, I want to come with you inside,” she insisted, pulling on Ian’s hair.

Not daring to try to talk since he thought that would trigger his cough, Ian positioned himself over Nichole and lined up his still mostly limp cock over the spot his mouth had been occupying. He started pumping into her, and her yells got louder and louder. She was bucking up into him, crying out, “Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Ian was still trying not to cough. He squeezed his eyes shut and just kept pistoning in and out of her, it felt like he was doing that forever. Suddenly she was shuddering violently under him, and he pulled out and jumped up off the bed.

“Holy shit, are you okay?” he said.

She smiled up at him dreamily, her body still showing evidence of little tremors going off. “I just came, baby, you done good.” She laughed. Then she noticed his rapidly flagging erection. “Good thing you pulled out-you forgot the glove,” she observed. She lazily reached her hands out. “Let me put that back in my mouth, we’ll let you finish…”

Ian looked around in a panic, scooping up his boxers and pants. “Uh, no, that’s okay, I need to get home anyway.” He got into his clothes in record time. He rushed to the door but had to fumble with the lock. He looked back at Nichole, still prone on the bed. “Uh, thanks,” he said, lamely, and slipped out the door and shut it behind him.

A few weeks later, Ian was riding the same train after a shift at work. He had his earbuds in and his eyes closed but someone sat down right next to him and poked him, hard, in the thigh.

“Good thing you take this train pretty often-you left without giving me your number or a last name,” Nichole said as he straightened up in his seat and pulled his earbuds out. “I needed to see you again.”

“Uh, well, the thing is, I’m gay,” Ian told her, figuring it’d be easiest just to pull off the band aid rather than wait for her to proposition him.

“Uh, well, the thing is, I’m late,” she replied, clearly annoyed and mocking him.

Ian just looked at her, confusion clear on his face. What did she want him to do about being late? He couldn’t make the train go any faster.

“Um, do you need to get someplace? Do you think it’d be quicker if we got off the train and tried to get a taxi?” he asked, trying to be helpful.

“Not that kind of late, jackass. I’m late for not being pregnant.”

Ian’s face blanched for a second, but then he remembered their hook up. He wasn’t sure what he should say, but she was already talking again. “My ob/gyn and I counted back from how many weeks along I am, and there’s three guys I was with then, and the other two used condoms, so…”

“Well, condoms have been known to break,” Ian said. Wrong thing to say, she just narrowed her eyes at him and pinned him with a dirty look.

“Just give me your phone-and your last name. I’m not going to do a paternity test till the kid is born, but I want to be able to find you if it turns out it’s yours,” she said, snatching his phone from his hand. She sent herself a text from his phone so she’d have the number.

“Give me your license too,” she said. “You can always throw this phone away…”

“I wouldn’t…” Ian protested.

“I’m not taking any chances,” she said. He got his wallet out of his back pocket and passed over his ID. “Gallagher, huh?” she said, typing his name and address into her own phone. “And you’re twenty-one. I’m eighteen.”

“Uh, good?” Ian said, surprised she was that young-she looked a lot older to him the day they went to her room.  

“Not exactly good-I didn’t want to be a teen mom.”

“Well, um, that is…you don’t have to have it…do you?”  
  
“Fuck you, man, of course I do. I’m Catholic-I’m not about to burn in hell for an abortion,” she hissed.

Nichole got off the train at her stop and Ian stayed on to go home. When he got there, Lip was home so he told him about seeing the woman who had him scrubbing his mouth out with a sponge a few weeks ago, and her news.

“Holy shit!” Lip yelled, sitting down hard on one of the kitchen chairs while Ian went about making himself a sandwich.

“Calm down, I’m pretty sure the kid’s not mine, I didn’t come,” Ian said, taking a big bite out of his sandwich.

“Calm down? Did she say it could be someone else’s?” Lip asked.

Ian nodded and gulped down his bite. “At least two-but she said they wore condoms.”

Lip let that sink in. “Wait, does that mean you didn’t?”

Ian shrugged. “There wasn’t time, one minute she wanted me going down on her,” Ian looked at his sandwich and dropped it on the plate, suddenly he had lost his appetite, “and then next thing she was telling me to get on her. But like I keep telling you, I didn’t come.”

“You’re sure?” Lip asked. “You were pretty freaked that day-maybe you just don’t remember?”

“Lip, I’m sure. She offered to finish me off when I pulled out, but I ran. I didn’t come.”

Lip thought a moment, and visibly relaxed. “Okay, that’s good. I mean, there’s always a chance you might’ve had some sperm in your pre-come, but only if you had like, just had sex before you saw her and hadn’t peed…”

“What?” Ian choked out.

“Well, pre-ejaculate doesn’t have any sperm in it-or any live sperm, at least. But there’s been rare instances where live sperm can get picked up in the pre-come if you recently had sex and there’s still some sperm in your urethra if it didn’t get washed away by peeing in between,” Lip said.

“And you know this how?” Ian asked.

“Sex ed. How do you not know it?” Lip asked back.

“They didn’t teach it till tenth grade-by then I was already with Kash and anytime they talked about the female reproductive system I sort of tuned out,” Ian said. “Uh, Lip? I kinda jerked off right before I met that chick.”

“You didn’t…” Lip said, instantly worried again. It would be just Ian’s luck to stumble his way into a fucked up immaculate conception.

“I was pissed off, you know? At Caleb. And frustrated. And I knew I wasn’t going to get any sex while we were fighting, so, when I had a shower at the end of my shift, I had the entire locker room to myself, and, I, uh, rubbed one out.”

“Christ, Ian.” Lip shook his head. “Wait, did you pee after?”

“Who can remember?” Ian insisted. “That was like, over six weeks ago now.” But he was lying, he did remember. He peed before taking the shower, he always did, it was part of his routine. But still, the odds HE got Nichole pregnant had to be super low. Later that night Ian did some online research and was vastly relieved to discover it was pretty damn near impossible that he was the father.

 

A few days later, Ian got a call from Nichole, asking him if he could please go to a doctor’s appointment with her the next day.

“My mom would come, but she’s got work,” Nichole explained. “And the other two guys are completely uninterested-and scum. Could you please take me, even though I know you don’t think the baby is yours? I don’t want to do this alone.”

Ian being the stand-up guy he was, said yes. He wound up arranging his schedule so he could go to most of her appointments with her-it was easier than her mother trying to get off work from her nine-to-five office job. Ian was with her at the appointment where they could hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, and Nichole said she felt like celebrating after, and asked Ian back to her apartment for herb tea. Nichole’s mother was a stickler about Nichole having a healthy pregnancy, she didn’t want her grandchild being born with any more strikes against it than they were already facing. Ian was still pretty excited after hearing the heartbeat and agreed to keep Nichole company for a while.

This time they sat in the small living room, but being back in that apartment, Ian started feeling claustrophobic again. Nichole was sitting too close to him on the couch, and she put her mug of tea on the coffee table and began stroking her long fingernails up and down Ian’s thigh.

Ian gave her a weary look. “Nichole, you know I’m gay…”

“What a waste of a great penis,” Nichole pouted.

“I know at least a couple of guys who would disagree with thinking it’s a waste…” Ian tried to argue.

“Are you sure, though? What were you doing with me that day if you’re gay?” she purred, never stopping her stroking motion.

“I’m sure. I was sure that day-why I was here doesn’t matter anymore; I broke up with the guy who tried telling…I broke up with the guy I was seeing then. I’m seeing someone else now.”

“You fucking suck.” Nichole picked up her mug and flounced off to the kitchen. Ian followed with his mug, dumped out what was left in it, thanked her for the tea, and left. They already had planned that he’d be at her next appointment, and he had the feeling she wasn’t going to tell him he didn’t need to be there. And he was right.

 

The months went by and one day in March Ian was just getting to work when he got a call from Nichole’s mother that the baby was coming. She was going to be with Nichole’s in the delivery room, but Nichole wanted all the potential baby daddies to get to the hospital at some point for their paternity tests-she wasn’t leaving until the father’s name was on the birth records. Ian assured her he’d go directly after his EMT shift ended.

He called Lip during his break and asked if he’d go up to the hospital with him.

“Uh, of course, but, can I ask why?” Lip asked. “I thought you were sure the kid’s not yours.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, there’s still that chance right? And, uh, now that I’ve heard the kid’s heartbeat and saw the ultrasound pictures, it’ll be kind of hard to say goodbye too, even if the baby is someone else’s, you know?” Ian said, his voice quiet and sad.

Lip exhaled, yeah, he knew how attached Ian could get. “I’ll go with you.”

Lip met Ian at the EMT barn when his shift ended. Luckily Ian and his partner didn’t get any late calls on their shift, and Ian took a quick shower and was ready to go when Lip got there. Walking to the El stop, Ian let Lip know he hadn’t heard from Nichole’s mother, so he assumed she was still in labor. “Babies can take a while, especially first babies,” Ian told Lip. He had been reading everything he could find on the subject. “If you don’t want to stick around, I’ll understand.”

“Naw, it’s cool-I don’t have anything better to do,” Lip told him. “Um, do you mind my asking why I’m here and not Trevor?”

Ian looked instantly guilty. “Uh, he doesn’t know…”

“Doesn’t know Nichole’s in labor?” Lip prodded.

“Doesn’t know anything about it,” Ian said.

Lip rolled his eyes and wondered if he had time to smoke a cigarette before their train got there. “Ian, what the fuck?”

“The kid’s not mine, Lip, okay? And, we’ve had enough to deal with-there was never a good time to say, ‘Oh, by the way, before I started seeing you, before I even knew you existed, I went home with a chick to prove to my ex that sex with a woman still counted as cheating, and I technically had sex with her but didn’t come but now she’s pregnant but there’s a couple other guys in the picture.’ It doesn’t exactly come up naturally, you know?”

“But, Ian, it’s been months, and you’ve been going to all those doctor visits…” Lip tried to argue.

“My schedule’s all over the place-he always just assumes I’m working if I’m not with him, and he’s never bothered to actually learn about my shifts, so,” Ian shrugged. “Look, the kid won’t be mine and I’ll never see Nichole again. Trevor won’t care.”

They got to the hospital and were directed to a waiting room. There were a few other groups in there-family and friends of other women in the process of delivering babies-and there were two men keeping to themselves, and away from each other. Lip and Ian correctly assumed they were Nichole’s other partners from nine months ago. They were both dark haired, dark skinned, dark eyed guys.

After a couple of hours had passed, Nichole’s mother came into the waiting room with a nurse, and they gathered the three men together and brought them into an exam room to take swabs of their cheeks.

“We’ll have the results within twenty-four hours,” the nurse told them and left with the samples.

Nichole’s mother looked at the three men. “Ian, Nichole asked me to bring you to her room. They’ve probably got her all settled by now. You two, she’ll call you tomorrow when the results are in.” The other two men couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Ian said, “My brother’s in the waiting room, can we get him?”

“Sure.” Nichole’s mother followed Ian back to the waiting room. Lip was flipping through a magazine but jumped to his feet when he saw Ian.

“So, this is your brother,” Nichole’s mother said.

“One of them,” Ian nodded.

“Not a redhead,” she observed. “Did Nichole ever tell you my mother was Irish?”

Lip shot a look at Ian; he had a feeling he knew where this was going, but Ian wouldn’t meet his eye.

They walked into Nichole’s room and over to the bed by the window. The other bed in the room was occupied by a sleeping woman. Nichole had her baby in her arms, all swaddled in a pink and white blanket. She pursed her lips as she looked up at Ian.

“Pretty sure she’s yours; you’re the only ginger I ever had sex with.” Nichole pulled back the blanket to uncover the baby’s head, which was covered with fine red-gold hairs.  

The paternity tests were just a formality (Lip fleetingly wondered how they got paid for, but then decided not to bring it up-but Ian did have to pay for his out of pocket), and after a few months the baby’s eyes even morphed from all blue to an almost exact version of Ian’s blue-green mix.

By then, Trevor was long gone. Ian had told him the whole story the night the baby was born, not even bothering to wait for the paternity test results. He texted Trevor when he and Lip were leaving the hospital, asking if Trevor could meet him at his house. They all arrived at the same time and Lip said a quick goodnight and went upstairs.

Trevor and Ian sat down at the kitchen table and Ian dove right in.

“Listen, something pretty big has happened…um, I’m a father.”

Trevor snorted out a laugh. “Ha, good one, so, really, why did you want me to come over?”

“Trevor, I’m not kidding…” And Ian told him everything. At first Trevor was staring at him in utter disbelief, but by the time he got to the end of it, Trevor just looked disinterested.

“Well, that sucks,” Trevor said, when Ian wrapped up the story by saying how he was pretty sure the paternity test would show he was the father, what with Nichole having recessive genes for red hair and light eyes from her mother’s side of her family. “Looks like you’ll be paying child support for the next eighteen years.”

Ian just wrinkled his brow at that. He waited, but Trevor didn’t say anything else.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say about all this?” Ian finally asked.

“What else is there to say? It’s too bad it happened, and I’ve gotta wonder why you didn’t tell me sooner-okay, okay, you weren’t sure it was yours,” Trevor said, preempting Ian from reiterating that point. “But, okay, it’s over, now you know the kid’s yours, what’s that got to do with us?”

Ian was confused. “Um, it’s a big change? Bringing a baby into all this?”

Trevor narrowed his eyes at Ian. “Bringing a baby into what? You gonna marry the chick or something?”

“Well, no, but, I have a daughter now…”

“A daughter who has a mother who will take care of her,” Trevor said in an insisting tone.

“Well, I’ll be taking care of her too, sometimes,” Ian said. He and Nichole hadn’t discussed anything yet, but Ian was going to be part of his baby’s life. Babies needed parents, Ian felt strongly about that, not that his had ever been anything to go by. But that’s why it was all the more important to him to be a good parent.

“Ian, kids aren’t part of my plans until I’m in my thirties, or even forties, if then,” Trevor said in a warning tone.

“Well, I wasn’t planning on this either, but she’s here now,” Ian shrugged.

“I want to be young as long as possible,” Trevor insisted, “going to clubs and parties and shit-not taking care of some baby.”

“Trevor, to be honest, I’m pretty much partied out. That shit got boring when I was still in my teens. I’ve only been redoing that lifestyle because you’re so into it.”

“Are you saying _I’m_ boring?” Trevor asked, insulted.

“Well…,” Ian shrugged. “We don’t really have much to talk about outside of what party or club we’re going to next, you know?”

Trevor got up from the table. “Yeah, well, maybe I need to be surrounded by constant noise and other people because you bore me.”

Ian shrugged again. “That’s entirely possible.”

“You’re really choosing this baby over me?” Trevor all but yelled.

“That wasn’t my intention, but if you’re saying it’s you or the baby, then, yes. It’s the baby.” Ian wasn’t angry or upset, he just stated the facts plainly.

“You know what? From the start you never knew how good you had it with me. I’m glad this happened before I wasted any more of my time with you,” Trevor said. “Don’t bother looking for me when you realize what a mistake you’re making.” He waited a few seconds, but when Ian didn’t say anything else, he walked out the back door, slamming it behind him.

Ian got up and went to bed.

The next day he went back to the hospital to see the baby and Nichole, who handed him the test results showing he was in fact that father.

“I got you an appointment with a lawyer at Legal Aid to set up child support payments,” Nichole told Ian as he sat in a chair next to her bed holding the baby. “And to arrange shared custody-I want you to take the kid every weekend.”

“Nichole, my job doesn’t work like that…my shifts are assigned on a rotating basis,” he tried to explain.

“Work it out with the lawyer,” Nichole said. “Oh, and you have to sign a form so your name will be on the birth certificate, you can do that today before you leave, they told me they have the forms here and you just need to show your ID and sign it in front of a witness.”

“Okay,” Ian said.

“I named the baby Miranda Eileen-Eileen for my grandma and Miranda cuz I want to tweet to that Lin-Manuel guy I named my baby for him and maybe he’ll send me Hamilton tickets,” Nichole informed Ian.

“O….kay,” Ian said again, wondering just what kind of person his baby’s mother was going to turn out to be.

Ian helped Nichole and her mom get the baby settled in their apartment on a Tuesday, and Nichole was quite insistent that Ian come take Miranda home for the weekend.

“Pick her up Friday at three and bring her back Sunday night.”

For this week Ian could make that work-he had a midnight to noon shift on Friday and Sunday off, and Fiona and Debbie happily agreed to babysit during his shift on Saturday.

Ian picked the baby up on Friday. He had tried going home to catch a quick nap after his shift, but he was too keyed up. He got to Nichole’s twenty minutes early. Her mom answered the door, Miranda crying loudly in her arms.

“Oh, Ian, good, you’re here. I’ve got her baby bag all ready to go, and there’s another bag with bottles and formula and extra clothes. It’ll be easier in the future if you get a set of everything I’m sending that you can just keep at your house,” Nichole’s mother said before Ian even said hello.

They got her settled into her carrier seat, still crying, and Ian walked back to the El as fast as he could. With the motion of the carrier, the baby stopped crying and drifted off the sleep. Ian paced the El stop to keep her moving, and then the rocking train kept her sleeping the whole way to Ian’s stop, where his walking again kept her out till they got home.

At the house, Fiona and Debs couldn’t wait to get their hands on their little niece. Vee came over to get a look as well. They all oohed and ahed over the pink bundle and told Ian she was the prettiest baby they had ever seen.

“Really?” Ian said in surprise. He thought Miranda was too, but he didn’t have much experience with babies, plus he thought maybe he just thought that because she was his.

“Really,” Vee assured him. “Usually they all just look like little blobs at this stage, but look at her! She has your nose and your apple cheeks and your chin-she’s already a little person.”

“Yeah,” Fiona agreed. “Debs and Carl and Liam all looked like Shrek at first, big round heads and a stunned expression.”

“Hey!” Debbie yelled, offended. They all hushed her, but it was too late, Miranda awoke and started crying.

“It’s cool, Debbie, I’m sure she needs to be changed by now,” Ian said, picking her up out of the carrier. They all followed Ian upstairs to where Liam’s old changing table had been set up. Ian’s sisters dug out the diaper and the baby wipes while Ian unsnapped Miranda’s terrycloth sleeper. He wasn’t too intimidated changing the baby under six watchful eyes since a nurse at the hospital had trained him just like he learned EMT procedures-first he observed, then he did one with instruction on a dummy, then he got to do the real thing under supervision. Miranda cried the whole time, but she had done that when he was being trained too. Once she was all dry and snapped back into her outfit, Fiona pushed Ian’s hands away and picked her up off the table. She cradled the baby and looked up at Ian, her big brown eyes bright.

“She’s so precious, Ian.” Fiona started to gently rock Miranda side to side and she quieted. She looked up at Fiona was inquisitive eyes, and then looked at Debbie and Vee and finally at Ian. Ian broke into one of his biggest smiles looking back at her. He was overwhelmed, no mistake, but every time he looked at his little girl something told him it would all be all right.

That night, even though he hadn’t slept since getting up for his overnight shift the night before, he just couldn’t tear his eyes away from Miranda to get any real sleep. They had jammed Liam’s old crib into Frank’s old room, and Ian just stood by her crib watching her sleep most of the night. She woke up every few hours anyway, so Ian wouldn’t have gotten much sleep, and finally at four in the morning Fiona came in and told him to get back in bed and she’d heat up the next bottle and bring it to him when Miranda woke her up with crying. Ian changed Miranda’s diaper and was sitting propped up against his headboard talking softly to her when Fiona came back. Fiona handed Ian the bottle and then sat on the bed facing him.

“I’ll feed her if you want, you look beat,” Fiona said softly, the baby finally growing quiet as she took the nipple into her little mouth.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it. You’ll have her all day while I’m at work,” Ian said, never taking his eyes off his daughter.

“Just, put her back in the crib when she’s done, okay? Don’t fall asleep and roll onto her,” Fi said, standing up and patting Ian’s leg. “And get some sleep!”

Ian listened to his big sister and put the baby back in the crib after she had eaten and given him a couple of nice burps. Miranda was already back asleep by the time she touched down on the mattress, and Ian finally conked out for about four hours, but then it was time to get up and work.

He hated leaving the baby, but he knew she was in good hands. The morning passed uneventfully at work. He and his partner had to answer a few calls, but none of them were life-threatening emergencies, nor anything too gory.

They went back to their headquarters for their lunch break. Ian had long ago gotten rid of the stupid Superman lunchbox Caleb had given him and these days was using an insulated lunch bag he had picked up at Target. Fiona or Debbie had made his lunch today, since they wanted him to sleep as long as possible in the morning, and he opened the bag to find he had tuna on wheat bread and a bunch of grapes packed in the bag with the frozen ice pack and a bottle of water, and some oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert. Ian smiled and got up to get a bag of potato chips out of the vending machine in the break area. He returned to the table and put a small handful of chips on top of the tuna, then replaced the top piece of bread and pushed down on it to bust up the chips.

He was taking his first bite when his partner Sue and their boss Rita walked in and sat down at his table. They both looked at him closely. Ian felt pretty self-conscious, his mouth full of crunchy sandwich. He chewed quickly then swallowed down the bite.

“Everything okay, guys?” he asked.

“Ian, we’re a bit worried about you…” Rita began.

Ian put his sandwich down and grabbed the edge of the table. “Oh no, not this, I’m fine! I’ve been feeling good, nothing’s going on.” He tried so hard to remain calm, because if he didn’t, they could just use that against him. His mind was starting to race with thoughts now, though-was he acting weird, was he getting manic?

“Ian, Ian, it’s not that,” Sue was trying to reassure him, placing her hand over one of his. “We don’t think it’s your bipolar, you’re just…off a bit today-maybe you’re tired?”

“I am tired,” Ian admitted quietly. “But I’ve got this new baby, and she stayed over last night for the first time and…”

“WHAT?” Rita and Sue pretty much screeched in unison.

“Back up, Gallagher-I thought you were gay?” Rita said.

“I am,” Ian said quickly.

“But you’re also a new dad?” Sue asked, worrying that Ian was in some sort of full blown delusion. They rode together every day; he had never mentioned a baby before.

“I am,” Ian said again. “I’ve got the paternity test to prove it.”

Sue and Rita looked at each other, they didn’t know what to make of this.

“Ian,” Rita thought maybe they could start over, “when Sue came to me today, she told me you have seemed a bit off-distracted- the past week or so…”

“Yeah,” Ian admitted with a sigh. “That’s when the baby was born. Until she was, I hadn’t really thought she would be mine.”

Sue was dying to ask questions, but she knew with Ian she just needed to wait for him to tell her stuff. As private a person as Ian was, overnight shifts on quiet nights tended to turn the EMT rig into a confessional, and Ian opened up about things eventually, as long as she didn’t pry.

Rita got over her initial surprise and said, “Well, you get six weeks paid paternity leave…”

Ian’s tired eyes lit up. “I do?”

“Yup,” Rita nodded. “How about we count this as a full day of work and you can have the afternoon off, and we’ll mark down tomorrow as your first leave day?”

“I have tomorrow off,” Ian said.

“Even better,” Rita said. “Your leave will start Monday. I’ll email you the paperwork-it’s just one form-and get me a copy of the birth certificate. If that has your name on it, that’s all they need, but if it doesn’t, HR will need a copy of that paternity test too.”

“My name’s on the birth certificate,” Ian assured her.

“Well, great! Guess the only question left to ask is, do you have any pictures?” Rita said.

Ian’s eyes crinkled into one of his happiest smiles. “You might be sorry you asked-I’ve got about a million of them and she’s only a week old.”

When Ian told Nichole he had six weeks off, she insisted he take the baby full time for all of it. She’d go to the doctor’s checkups scheduled for Miranda with him, but other than that, he could keep her.

“You’re being paid to stay home with her, so stay home with her,” Nichole told him.

“They do that so the parent can bond with the baby, but don’t you want to bond with her too?” Ian asked.

“I’ll bond with her when you’re back to work,” Nichole said disinterestedly.

Ian talked to Nichole’s mother privately, to ask if she thought maybe Nichole had post-partum depression. Nichole’s mother sighed heavily.

“No, Ian, I’m sure that’s not it at all. Nichole’s just never been interested in kids. She had one job as a babysitter once and was bored to tears. Some women just aren’t interested in being mothers. Sometimes motherly instinct kicks in when they have a child, but sometimes it doesn’t.”

Ian thought that actually made a lot of sense. Through the years and on the job he’d met lots of moms that didn’t seem too into their kids.   So, Ian took Miranda home and enjoyed the next six weeks immensely.

One of his favorite things to do was to hold Miranda on his chest and just talk to her. He had read that babies found their parent’s voice to be soothing, and for the first time in his life he had someone all his own to talk to, even if she couldn’t talk back.

Ian would sit on the couch, the baby snuggled up in his arms, and he’d just talk and talk. He told her everything he could think of-stories about all his brothers and sisters growing up, plots from his favorite tv shows and movies, synopses of anything he’d been reading lately. And he’d read to her too, kids’ books and training manuals and magazine articles. Sometimes Miranda would be awake and cooing back at him, sometimes her eyes were heavy with sleep, and sometimes she’d be completely asleep. Ian loved getting to talk to her and tell her everything he knew, everything he remembered that he figured was appropriate for a little girl to hear, even if she probably didn’t understand or wouldn’t remember.

One day when she was almost a month old, Ian read a story about spring training to her, and then he told her he had played baseball when he was little, not as little as her, but still pretty little. She seemed to raise her little eyebrows in interest, so he tried to remember some stories from his glory days as an athlete to tell her. She lay in his arms, looking up at him and reaching out with her little hands, putting her fingers on his lips and sometimes into his mouth, like she was trying to catch his words. Anytime he stopped talking for a moment she started to fuss, so he dug deeper and deeper into his memories, trying to remember his Little League days. He told her how Lip’s hand-me-down glove was tight on his bigger than Lip’s hand, how the ice cream truck would be parked at the edge of the field on game days and how he always couldn’t wait to get a popsicle after the game (even if it was the cheapest treat you could get, he appreciated that Fiona always saved up dimes and quarters so he could get one), he told her about practices and what little he could remember of the games and about sliding into home and one spectacular catch he made by dumb luck one time.

He was finally out of stories but she was still looking at him and poking at his mouth to get him to say more, so he let his memory dredge up something he had studiously tried to forget.

“This one game, there was a bad boy-well, people thought he was bad, but I always thought of him as being badass, which is pretty awesome, you know?” Ian told Miranda, looking down into her eyes. She cooed in apparent agreement. “Yeah, he was badass. He had black thick hair and eyes like a cloudless summer sky. He was littler than a lot of the kids, but there was no one tougher on our team-in the whole league-no matter how much bigger or older than him they were.” Miranda had let her hands come to rest in front of her, listening intently.

“So, Mi…this boy, he took care of his teammates, you know? If you messed with one of us, you messed with all of us, but he especially stood up for any and all of us. We were playing a game against a team from across town, from North Side, and they all had brand new uniforms every year and all their parents brought pennants and they had a cooler in their dugout with real Gatorade, and all we had was the rusty water fountain on the wall of our dugout and ratty old uniforms. The snooty kids started taunting us the moment they got there, and their parents just laughed. The badass boy got madder and madder the longer the game went on. The other team kept yapping at us, and the umps were giving every close call to the other team, and their strike zone was way more generous than ours. Their star player came up to bat and hit a grounder down the third baseline, and the third baseman threw the ball to me and I stepped on the bag to get the runner out on his way to second, and I whipped the ball to the first, which is the position the blue eyed boy played. His foot was on the base and he caught my throw no problem, and then the snooty kid got to the base and stomped right on Mi…the first basemen’s foot. The umpire called him safe, and told my teammate that the tie goes to the runner, but there was no tie! He had caught the ball more than a full step before the boy got there! The badass argued, our coach argued, but the umpire wouldn’t change the call. So do you know what that badass blue eyed boy did? He pulled his dick out and pissed on first base!”

Miranda broke into a smile. Ian’s head reared back in surprise. “Did you…did you just smile?” Miranda was looking at him, and smiled again. Her eyes crinkled just like Ian knew his did when he was really smiling. He had read babies usually started to smile between four and six weeks old, and he really hoped he’d be there when she did it for the first time, and now here it was.

“You really liked that story, huh?” Ian smiled at her. She smiled back again in response.

 

 

 

 

Once Ian’s leave was up, Miranda returned to her mom’s house for the weekdays, and Ian had her Friday afternoon through Sunday night whether he was working or not. Ian pleaded with Nichole to change things, but she just told him the weekends were when her friends were free, and that’s all she cared about. Ian wasn’t getting to see the baby a lot of the time he had her though, and with each passing week it upset him more. Nichole finally agreed to change the custody agreement to let Ian have Miranda every other week, as long as he paid for daycare during the weeks she was with Nichole, and also paid more in child support so she could hire weekend babysitters.

Fiona was livid. “Ian, you’re paying child support for a child you’re supporting. Your daycare payments should be deducted from the child support.”

Ian just shrugged. Nichole was unreasonable, that they found any kind of solution was the best he could do.

Miranda went to daycare when Ian had her too, unless he had the day off. He spent every free moment he had with her. And his sisters and brothers pitched in so much too, picking her up or dropping her off at daycare or with her mom if Ian was at work.

Ian discovered an unexpected bonus in getting to have Miranda around so much-on nights when he worked, in the past when he got home he’d be too keyed up for at least a couple of hours to fall asleep, no matter how tired he was. But now when he got off a shift, he’d get home to his little girl, or pick her up early from daycare, and sit down with her on the couch and all the tension of his work would seep out of him and he’d be ready to sleep within twenty minutes, no matter how stressful the job had been. Her solid warm weight would just lull him into being completely concentrated on her, and the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. Whether she was asleep or awake in his arms, she soothed him.

After about a year and a half, Nichole sat down with Ian and told him she was tired of being “tied down” and wanted to put the baby up for adoption, unless Ian wanted full custody.

“Nichole, are you sure about this? You’ll give up all your rights? You won’t see her ever again?”

“Ian, do you have any idea how hard it is to get a guy interested in you once he knows you have a kid? Besides, she’s walking and talking now, she’s getting to be too much to have to keep an eye on. I should’ve sold her when she was a newborn and made some serious money.”

Ian was shaking with rage, but he calmly told Nichole he’d assume full custody. They had papers drawn up and Nichole never so much as tried to see Miranda again.

All of Ian’s family, including Vee and Kev, were thrilled.

“I never wanted to say anything, because you had to deal with that bitch, but it really fried my ass how after a week at her mom’s, Miranda would come here all diaper rash and with snarls in her hair, and then you’d take such good care of her and give Nichole back a healthy, happy baby every week,” Fiona said. Ian had always sent Miranda home with diaper rash cream and Johnson’s No More Tangles for her curly red hair, but Nichole didn’t bother to use any of it.

Miranda was finally home where she belonged full time, and no one ever looked back.

The summer Miranda was three years old was a brutally hot one in Chicago. Every day the air was laden with humidity, but it never seemed to rain. The heat kept building and building in the city, and the EMT crews were being run off their feet answering calls ranging from heat stroke to gang violence nonstop.

At home, Miranda and Ian had a bedtime routine. Ian would give her a cool bath and put her into her pale green lightweight cotton pjs and read her a bedtime story. She loved books and would pick what she wanted Ian to read-for a while he had to read her the Beatrix Potter books night after night for a few solid months. She was finally off that kick and now they were working their way through Winnie The Pooh. She’d sit on Ian’s lap, lean her head against his chest and stare at the pages in the book in his hand. Ian wondered if she was just looking at the pictures or sussing out how to read on her own. No matter how hot it was, he loved those evening snuggles. He’d set up an oscillating floor fan right in front of the couch and let hit blow over them while he read. Miranda’s soft curls would fluff up in the breeze and his heart was pretty close to bursting, he was so filled with love for this little miracle he had helped create.  

The next day, Ian was at the park, pushing Miranda on a swing when he heard a familiar voice yelling.

"Don't drop the change, and-hey!  Get me a Choco Taco!'

Without even having to see him, Ian said, "Mickey?" and turned around to see where the voice was coming from. 

"Gallagher?"  Mickey’s head looked around till he saw where Ian was, and still keeping an eye on Yev who was at the ice cream truck parked near the swings, he walked over to the swingset. and saw Miranda. "Whoa, look at the little redhead!  She's a knockout-is she Debbie's?"

Ian felt like he was in a dream. Mickey was standing before him in the hazy, hot sunshine…but he was supposed to be in jail?

Mickey snapped his fingers under Ian’s nose. “You okay there, Gallagher? Do you need to get out of the sun?”

Ian blinked his eyes. “Uh, no, um, not Debbie’s. Mine.” He kept pushing Miranda, who was looking up at Mickey from underneath her Little Mermaid sun visor.

Mickey raised his eyebrows and said, “Yours, huh? Some North Sider finally snap you up and you guys went the surrogate route?”

“Heh, no, not at all,” Ian said with a little laugh. “Um, she was a bit of an a-c-c-i-d-e-n-t. It’s a long story.”

“I bet,” Mickey said in his old inimitable way. “The mom around?”

“No, gone. Completely. Out of the picture, never to return.”

Mickey nodded. Yevgeny came running up to Mickey, holding the treats and Mickey’s change tight in his little hands.

“They had cherry screwballs!” he told Mickey excitedly.

“Just remember, that gumball is gonna be frozen solid when you get to it-don’t break a tooth and don’t swallow it,” Mickey warned.

“I’ll remember!” He handed Mickey his taco and the money.

“Yevgeny, you remember Ian? From the neighborhood?” Mickey said, sounding a little unsure.

“Probably not, I haven’t seen you since you were littler than this one,” Ian said gently, pointing to Miranda. “I’m good friends with Kev and Vee, and I think you see my sister Fiona every once in a while, Yev?”

Yevgeny looked Ian over with his big blue eyes. “I know Fiona,” he admitted.

“Say hi,” Mickey insisted.

“Hi,” Yev and Ian said at the same time, and then they both broke into big smiles.

“Yevgeny, this is my daughter Miranda,” Ian said.

“Hi!” Miranda chirped.

“Hi,” Yev replied to her. “Dad, can you open this please?” he said, handing the screwball to Mickey. Mickey pried the lid off and handed it back, holding his own treat all the while. Ian’s eyes filled hearing Yevgeny address Mickey with the name he was deprived of for far too long.

“You guys want anything? I’m buying,” Mickey said to Ian.

“No thanks, we had a snack right before we came here, and we’ve got juice and water,” Ian said, his voice a little thick. He indicated the bag hanging on Miranda’s stroller that was parked next to the kiddie swing.

“Daddy, hold you?” Miranda said. That was her version of “pick me up”-it had started from before she could really talk when Ian would ask, “Do you want Daddy to hold you?”   When she did start talking, she’d lift her arms to him and say, “Hold you!” She hadn’t outgrown it yet, and frankly, Ian didn’t want her to, but he knew one day it would be inevitable.

Ian lifted her out of the bucket swing and Mickey came a little closer. Yev sat down in the dirt, enjoying his frozen treat.

“Well, look who we have here,” Mickey said with a big smile. Ian pulled off Miranda’s visor and fluffed her hair with his fingers. The kiddie swings were in full shade now, her little face wouldn’t get sunburn.

“Mickey, this is Miranda. Miranda, Mickey,” Ian said.

“Pleased to meet ya,” Mickey said, and Miranda laughed.

“Hope you don’t mind if I eat this, but it’s melting,” Mickey said, holding up the foil package.

“Not at all,” Ian said. Mickey took a couple of quick bites and then dotted some of the vanilla ice cream on his nose. Miranda giggled.

“Something funny, kid?” Mickey asked.

“You have ice cream on your nose!” Miranda said in that little kid voice full of excitement and laughter.

“Here?” Mickey said, wiping at one side of his nose with the pad of his thumb.

“No!” Miranda giggled.

“Here?” he said, trying the other side.

“No!” she was in hysterics, pointing and adding, “There! There!”

Mickey finally wiped the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “Did I get it that time?”

“Yes!” and she clapped her little hands. Ian was looking at her with unabashed affection, and some amazement. She was usually quiet and shy around strangers, especially men. Apparently she was just as susceptible to Mickey’s charms as her daddy had been back in the day, Ian thought to himself.

“So, Miranda, huh? That’s no kind of name for a little spitfire like you-that’s an old lady’s name, or something the cops read to ya,” Mickey said. “What can we call you? Mandy? Nope, no good, we’ve already got one of those. Mindy? Naw, too close to Mandy.” The little girl was giggling at everything that came out of Mickey’s mouth. “You giggle a lot, don’t ya? Oh, I know, we should call you Merry!” Ian actually liked that a lot.

“That’s perfect, Mick.”

Mickey shot Ian one of his happiest smiles, Ian drew in a breath. How did they get here?

“I’m done, Daddy, can I wipe off my hands please?” Yevgeny said from down at their feet, standing up with his little plastic cup.

Mickey had a little Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack hanging off one arm. He unzipped the front pocket and took out a pack of organic wipes and gave one to Yev, and then pulled out one for himself and cleaned off his own hands. “You guys want one?” he offered Ian.

“We’re good, thanks,” Ian said.

“Can I throw the trash away, Dad?” Yevgeny asked.

“Where’s your bubblegum?” Mickey replied.

“Already in the cup. I chewed it, but the flavor didn’t last,” Yevgeny reported. Mickey nodded and stuffed his taco wrapper and wipe in Yevgeny’s screwball cup, and Yev ran over to the nearest trash bin and threw it in.

When he came back he asked, “Hey, mister, can I play with your little girl?”

Ian looked at Mickey. “He’s real good with Vee’s girls, he’s used to playing with others.”

“Um, sure, I guess. She’s littler than Gemma and Amy though, what did you have in mind?” Ian asked Yevgeny.

“Can I push her in the swing, like you were doing? Please?” Ian was tickled Yev had that unexpected polite streak, just like Mickey.

Ian looked at Miran…Merry. He was honestly so glad Mickey came up with that. “What do you say? Would you like to have Yev push you in the swing some more?”

“Yes!” she said brightly. Ian strapped her back into the seat, and Yev gently began pushing her.

Ian and Mickey walked down to the other end of the swing set once they saw the kids were happy.

“How long you been out?” Ian asked, his voice low and shy.

“Four months, give or take,” Mickey said. Ian felt something cold clench around his heart for a minute. Mickey had been free and no one told him? He took a deep breath and tried to let that go for now.

“Overcrowding?”

Mickey snorted, “No-my conviction got overturned. Turns out the judge who heard my case was taking bribes from this prominent criminal law firm to give them a reputation for being able to win cases and charge higher fees.  My case was rushed through the guy's court so he could get back to the more high-profile cases that he was making profits off of, so the conviction was nullified plus I got a cash settlement from the law firm to prevent me from suing them-I got $400,000 dollars and a clean record.”

Ian let out a low whistle. "That's a lot of money."

"To you and me, yeah, but this firm makes hundreds of millions in profits every year. And, I had to sign one of those non-disclosure things, so I'd appreciate it if you kept the amount on the down low, but like the lawyer who brokered the deal for me told me, the firm itself already leaked that they had settled with lots of convicts-it shows future potential clients that they're will to do anything to win for them, even breaking the law." Ian and Mickey shook their heads in unison at the way the so-called legitimate world handled their business. At least growing up South Side you knew to be on the look out for people to deal dirty.

"Yeah, so, anyways," Mickey said somewhat nervously, "we're just trying to work out some things when it comes to Yev. I, ah, don't exactly want it to be common knowledge around the Yards that I have some money now, I'm a little paranoid that someone might try to nab Yevgeny or something." Ian winced at Mickey's choice of words, but quickly realized Mickey wasn't equating what Ian did then to what Mickey was worried about now. He tuned back into what Mickey was saying. "...a place on the North Side, a condo, of all things, bought and paid for, plus I put money in a college fund for Yev and gave some to Iggy to fix up the house and sent some to Mandy. She's in New York now, did you know that?"

"No, I had sort of lost touch with her," Ian admitted.

"She know about your little girl?" Mickey asked. Ian shook his head no. "I figured as much-pretty sure she would've told me about that if she knew," Mickey said, his eyes watching the little girl in the swing with softness. "It's complicated with Yev, Vee legally adopted him back when I thought I wouldn't get out till he was almost grown."

"I remember Fiona mentioning something about that when it happened," Ian said. Actually he had overheard Fiona and Kevin talking about it, no one mentioned anything regarding Milkoviches in front of Ian ever once Mickey had gone to prison.

"Yeah, well, Svetlana's being kind of a bitch and is trying to use the kid as leverage to make some sort of profit. I'm willing to buy her and Vee off to get the adoption ended or reversed or whatever would give me my legal rights back, but I'll be damned if Svetlana's going to rob me at gunpoint for child support and shit. I'll pay whatever it takes to actually share custody and give her the money needed to raise him proper, but I don't want her making a profit off it, does that make sense?"

"Of course, Mickey." Ian had a feeling Svetlana could be quite mercenary, even when it came to her son, and especially when it came to Mickey.

Mickey sighed. "I wish he could just come and live with me full time but I don't want to rip him away from the family life he has with them, especially the little girls. It's confusing for him, I'm sure. And he has other little friends in the neighborhood and we just want to keep things as normal for him as possible what with me just dropping back into his life. He likes my place though, especially having his own bedroom and the pool. It's the building's pool, not just mine," Mickey added quickly.

Ian smiled. "Don't worry, Mick. I know you haven't sold out. Even if you have cleaned up a little."

"Yeah," Mickey grinned. "I got a second chance at life and a butt load of cash to help me make things better and a son to take care of. Time to stop fucking up, right Gallagher?" Mickey held up his knuckles for Ian to see the tattoos had been removed. Ian could still make out the letters faintly-whiter skin against Mickey's pale skin-but you had to know what to look for. Ian's eyes flashed to Mickey's chest, wondering if that tattoo had been removed as well, but Mickey didn't say and Ian somehow didn't really want to know if it was gone. Mickey rubbed at his knuckles a little subconsciously. "I, ah, actually had to 'interview' to get into the condo where I live, and I'm thinking about figuring out what to do for a job and shit-just easier to talk to people if they're not distracted by, um, appearances."

Ian nodded in understanding.

Yev and Merry were getting along great while their dads talked-Yev was talking to the little girl the whole time he was pushing the swing, telling her about his house and his friends and his new room at his daddy's. His voice and the motion of the swing had lulled Merry into a pleasant state of dreaminess. Ian could see she wasn't quite asleep yet, but would be soon. Probably a good time to get her home for a nap, Ian explained to Mickey. They walked over to the other end of the swing set to collect their kids.

"Thanks for letting me play with your little girl, mister," Ian said when Mickey had explained to Yev it was time for Merry to go home.

"Thank you for taking such good care of her," Ian smiled. Mickey and Yev held the swing steady while Ian pulled his daughter up out of the seat. She cuddled right into Ian's shoulder and smiled sleepily at Yevgeny.

"Say goodbye to Yevgeny and Mickey," Ian whispered to her, placing a soft kiss to the top of her head at the end of the statement.

"Bye," Merry said, waving tiredly. Ian figured he'd carry her home and just push the stroller along with one hand. He walked over to the contraption and put his hand on the handle.

"Uh, it was nice running into you. Bye, Yev...goodbye, Mick," Ian said.

The Milkoviches waved and Ian started walking away.

"Yo, Gallagher!" Mickey called, but not too loudly, he didn't want to startle the almost asleep girl. Ian stopped and turned around. Mickey rubbed at his lower lip with his thumb-Ian remembered that as Mickey's "making up his mind if he should say something" face. "Um, you ever need anything, just, you know, ask. You know?"

"Sure, Mick. Thanks."

"Do you still have the same phone number?" Mickey asked in a rush, before Ian could start walking again.

"Yes."

"I'll text you my number, in case you should ever need it," Mickey said. Ian nodded. In his most sincere tone Mickey added, "I mean it, Gallagher. You ever need anything at all, you call me." Ian nodded again and walked away.

Halfway home he stopped in his tracks, Merry sleeping soundly on his shoulder. Mickey still had his number. After all this time.

The next few days, the heat and humidity just continued to build. Ian was working day shifts, so Merry was in air conditioning during the day at daycare, but cranky and miserable at night. The house didn’t cool off all that much after the sun went down, and she was getting less and less sleep. On Ian’s next day off, she was cranky and damn near inconsolable, no matter what Ian tried to keep her cool. She heated right up after having her morning bath, and the little wading pool out in the back yard wasn’t doing the trick. The above ground pool liner had holes in it, so Fiona hadn’t even tried filling it that summer.

The day was oppressive, the sky was gray and the Weather Channel was predicting a high chance of thunderstorms, so Ian figured it wasn’t worth the effort to try to go to the lake if they’d have to make a run for it when the storms rolled in, plus it would just be crowded there.

He stared at his phone, looking at Mickey’s number, wondering if he should try taking him up on his offer to help. Merry was helping him make up his mind by howling loudly. She wanted Ian to hold her, but then she hated how their skin was sticking together and would howl even louder. At this rate she’d never go down for her nap, and her mood would continue to deteriorate. Ian pushed the call button.

He briefly explained his situation to Mickey, and Mickey could clearly hear Merry crying in the background. He told Ian they were welcome to come use the pool at his condo, Mickey wasn’t doing anything and they could stay as long as they liked. Yev was going to daycamp plus it was one of his nights to stay with Svetlana, so he wouldn’t be there, but Mickey was sure Merry would still have fun.

"I'll send a Uber to pick you guys up, there's a guy I use all the time to take Yev and me back and forth from there to here, he has car seats for kids all ready to go in his trunk," Mickey said.

Ian tried to argue, "Mickey, I can't let you do that, it's too much..."

"You'll have to take at least a train and two buses to get here, Gallagher, and Merry will be more upset than ever after all that, not to mention during," Mickey said.

Ian sighed heavily. "Send the Uber. And, Mickey? Thanks."

Mickey met them at the entrance to his condo building and brought them straight to the pool. They set up at a table under an umbrella and Ian dug out Merry's clear bright pink water wings and a tube of baby sunscreen. Merry was wearing a bright blue two piece bathing suit and heart shaped plastic sunglasses. Mickey called her a princess and she giggled happily.

Ian was wearing a faded bathing suit he'd had for years-Mickey remembered seeing him in it "before"-and a striped T shirt that he pulled off over his head from the back collar with one hand-a move Mickey also remembered from "before". Ian put sunscreen on his daughter and then was trying to get as much as he could on his back, after doing his shoulders, arms, and torso. Mickey watched him struggle for a minute as Merry waited patiently for her daddy to put her water wings on, and then Mickey finally told Ian, "Hand that over, man, I'll get your back or you'll look like a lobster."

Ian handed over the tube and turned around. Mickey's hands on his back felt instantly familiar and Ian could swear he felt sparks everyplace Mickey's hands came in contact with his skin. Mickey did a thorough job and put the cap back on the sunscreen and sat down.

"Do you need any?" Ian asked, anxious to return the favor. "Fiona bought me a case of this to last the summer, we have plenty."

"Naw, man, I won't be going in the pool right now. I only swim in the early morning or late afternoon-or night. I wait till the sun's not so strong or I'll burn to a crisp," Mickey said. Ian was disappointed.

Ian stuck Merry's water wings under water and then pulled the slicked up plastic up her arms and blew up the two chambers of each wing, checking out Mickey's outfit all the while. Ian couldn't get over Mickey's poolside wardrobe, he was wearing deep blue swim trunks and a peach-PEACH-muscle shirt. Something must have shown on Ian's face because Mickey suddenly said, "Yeah, I tried wearing black down to the pool, but it got me funny looks. Plus, peach feels cooler."

"It looks good on you," Ian grinned. "Doesn't it, baby?" Miranda nodded and clapped her hands.

In the water, Merry was having a great time and was paddling across the shallow end and back to Ian over and over like a little duckling. The longer they were in the water, the more confident and cooler she became. But after they had been in for a while, some bigger boys that were playing in the deeper water with a ball had it get away from them by accident and it smacked Merry in the face right when she was at the furthest point away from Ian. When she opened her mouth to howl (more out of surprise than pain), a kid came running on the sidewalk of the pool and did a cannonball that splashed her in the face so she got a mouth and nose full of water and was gasping and panicking and crying. Mickey jumped in to grab her since he was closer to her than Ian. Ian got to her quickly and she reached for him and Mickey handed her over to Ian and they all got out of the pool.

They sat under the umbrella again and Ian got her calmed down and rocked her in his arms. Mickey was helpful by wrapping Merry in a towel while Ian was holding her. Ian looked up from his daughter's face when he saw she had stopped crying. Mickey was sort of hovering right in front of him, looking at Merry's face too. The peach shirt had gone a bit transparent when it got wet, and now Ian could see his first name was still on Mickey's chest. Mickey felt Ian's eyes on him again and looked up to meet Ian's eyes. When he saw where Ian must be looking, Mickey pulled the shirt aside at the armpit, uncovering his left pec.

Over Ian's last name, Mickey had a professionally done tattoo of red flames rising from a row of Celtic knots inked over where the letters had been. Mickey raised an eyebrow. "You like?" he asked.

Ian nodded, wanting to touch the tattoo so badly, but holding back. "No second L?" he asked instead.

"Yeah, well, trying to correct the spelling would've made the letters look too squeezed in-the guy told me that when I tried to get it fixed," Mickey sheepishly admitted. "So, no second L, no H."

"There was no H either?" Ian asked, surprised. "I guess it looked so infected I didn't look close enough. I'm sorry, Mickey, I should've looked closer."

"Aw, nothing you could've done about it-and it wasn't infected. You just saw it right after I did it, is all. I knew you were coming and...well, anyway," Mickey said, and shook his head to seemingly clear it of those memories. "I told the tattoo artist about your hair, and we both figured a Gaelic design was appropriate to use over 'Gallagher'," Mickey smiled.

"It's really cool, Mickey."

"Pretty," a sleepy voice said from Ian's shoulder.

"Hey, look who's got a sleepy face," Mickey said. "You want to bring her upstairs? Get her into some dry clothes and see if she'll sleep a while?'

Ian looked up at the sky. It was getting grey and it was only about two o'clock. His house would still be like an oven. Plus, he really wanted to talk to Mickey some more. "If it's not too much trouble."

"Are you kidding? Having a princess in my very own house? That's never a bother," Mickey said, eliciting his usual giggly response from Merry.

Mickey brought Ian and Merry right to Yev's room and pointed out the attached bathroom. "He has a little step stool in there, don't know if that applies to girls, but, it's there." Mickey said. Yev's bed had a removable guard rail on it, Mickey pulled it out and locked it in place. Then he left the redheads to it and told Ian he'd change into something dry himself. "You need to borrow anything dry to wear?" Mickey offered. Ian shook his head and said he had brought a change of clothes for the ride home.

A few minutes later, Ian rejoined Mickey in the hall. "She was out before I finished putting her clothes on," Ian whispered.

"Let me show you the rest of the place, come on," Mickey said. He brought Ian down the hall to the master bedroom. It had a king size bed and the room was done in warm, dark tones. The attached bathroom alone was bigger than Ian's bedroom on North Wallace and had a Jacuzzi tub and a walk in shower and a double sink and vanity. Mickey had just flung his wet clothes on top of a hamper in the corner and seeing them reminded him to offer some plastic bags to Ian for his and Merry's wet clothes. "We'll snag some down in the kitchen," Mickey said when Ian told him that would be a good idea.

Mickey showed Ian the other two rooms of the second story, one was a guest room and the other had exercise equipment and weights in it. "If I ever get a job, maybe this can be an office," Mickey said.

Downstairs Mickey showed Ian the spacious living room as they walked through. There was a working fireplace with a big (huge) screen TV mounted over it in front of a big overstuffed couch and the room had another couch and a recliner and a loveseat and a big coffee table and still seemed spacious and open. There was a formal dining room that led into the kitchen, which had a pantry built off of it. Mickey brought Ian in there to get the plastic bags.

"Here, let's take care of your stuff then I can show you the den," Mickey said. They went back upstairs and snuck into Yev's room. Merry was sound asleep, clutching a neon green stuffed monkey that was obviously well loved. They tiptoed out of the room after gathering the wet clothes from the bathroom and Mickey left a soft bedside light on before closing the door quietly. "She looks like an angel when she's sleeping," Mickey whispered. "But the monkey?"

"First birthday gift from Carl. It's her favorite," Ian explained. Mickey smiled.

Back downstairs Mickey showed Ian the den, which also had a working fireplace and lots of comfortable furniture. He offered Ian something to drink and eat and Ian said he'd have a bottle of water. Mickey grabbed one for each of them and motioned for Ian to have a seat. Outside the sky had gotten even grayer and darker.

They each took an end of the couch and opened up their waters, and caught each other stealing a glance as they drank. They both smiled, lowering their bottles.

"So," Mickey began just as Ian blurted out, "Why didn't you let anyone tell me you were out?"

Mickey took a deep breath and held it for a moment. "Honestly, Ian? I didn't want to fuck up your life any more than I already had."

Ian blinked in surprise. That was not the answer he had been expecting. "My...life?"

Mickey suddenly found his own water bottle the most fascinating thing in the world. He stared at it and nothing but it as he continued. "After that last visit," Mickey vaguely pointed the top of the water bottle towards his chest, "I decided trying to see you again was going to bring nothing but hurt to either of us. Hell, hearing your name was going to hurt. I quit asking Svetlana or Mandy about you cold turkey, that very day."

Ian winced. He had been so messed up then, he hadn't asked either of them anything about Mickey, ever.

"Time went on, I thought things were easier," Mickey continued. "I, ah, got a cellmate who...he wasn't too bad, you know? He didn't belong there, thought he was doing his sister's boyfriend a favor but wound up being nabbed for grand theft auto. Wouldn't rat out the boyfriend, though, so wound up sentenced to five years. He was lucky to get me as a cellmate, everyone in the place usually went rabid over fresh meat, but they knew not to mess with anyone under my protection. And at first, it wasn't even like that, but I let everyone think it. The kid was so green I wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole-didn't want to mess him up up here, you know?" Mickey tapped his forehead with his forefinger. Ian's heart broke a little-did Mickey really think anything he did caused any of Ian's troubles? Before Ian could say anything, Mickey started talking again.

"He not too subtly let me know he was gay, by offering to go down on me. Kid had no sense of playing it cool, he reminded me..." Mickey cleared his throat and changed his train of thought. "I said no about a hundred times, but on Christmas he was crying in his bunk-it was the first Christmas he didn't get to spend with his family at home, and...ah, Christ, you don't want to hear the details, but, you know, we became...something." Ian just nodded, he had no right to be jealous, he was out and free and seeing other people. He was actually kind of glad to know Mickey had someone on the inside too.

"But, then he got out for good behavior and shit, and, it just doesn't work, when someone's out and someone's in," Mickey said. "He came to see me a couple of times, but I could tell prison life was something he wanted to put as far in his past as he could, and I didn't love him or anything, so it was a hell of a lot easier to let him go. And then my new cellmate was about sixty years old and not into 'buggery' as he called it and then I got the surprise visit from the court appointed attorney for those of us that had been wronged, and that was it." Mickey finally looked at Ian.

"God, Mickey, I'm...I'm glad you had someone for a while at least," Ian said.

"Yeah, it helped pass the time. I heard he's married now, to some Walmart district manager. Good for him, you know?"

"I'm sure that manager guy doesn't have an ass as nice as yours." Ian really never knew what to say when he didn't know what to say.

Mickey burst out laughing. "Only you would think of something like that! Don't you remember, Fire Crotch? I do all the fucking in the joint, you know I can't have anyone thinking I'm their bitch." Ian started laughing too, both of them honestly laughed deeply, dissipating some of the tension in the room. Mickey quieted down again and figured he still hadn't answered Ian's question.

"When I got out, I didn't want to assume anything when it came to you, but I also felt like I wasn't ready to hear if you were all happily settled too, so I just sort of made it clear-without really saying anything specific-that I didn't want to know anything about you or your family." Ian could just imagine-people who knew Mickey well enough to ask him any personal questions also knew not to ask Mickey any personal questions unless he brought it up. "I wanted to deal with Svetlana's bullshit and have the Yevgeny situation squared away before I could find out about you. But then I bumped into you anyway and your life is so far from any of the millions of scenarios my imagination had ever come up with..." Mickey caught how Ian was looking at him from the corner of his eye. "Hey, endless nights in prison, remember? Of course I spent a lot of time wondering about you."

"Um, now that you saw me, did you wind up..." Ian didn't even have to finish the question.

"Got a Cliff's Notes version from Kev. Pretty sure Vee told him to stay out of it, but when Yevgeny told them we met you and Merry at the park, Kev sat me down after hours at The Alibi that night and told me you weren't seeing anyone since the baby came, but that before that there were a couple of fairly steady guys," Mickey said. "I felt like a total creep and told him I'd hear the rest from you some day, if there was any reason to hear it."

"There's not much more to tell, Mickey. Those guys were in my past the minute we decided to part-and the woman who had my baby was a one night stand. Of course I wound up knowing her longer than that one night, but nothing ever developed into a friendship, let alone any other kind of relationship, and it was just a relief when she finally admitted she didn't want Miranda and left us completely," Ian said. He felt like one day he'd tell Mickey just why he had sex with her, but today wasn't going to be that day.

"Mickey, there's so much I should've said to you, so much I should've thanked you for..."

"Don't, it's okay, water under the bridge," Mickey said.

"No, Mickey. I owe you. I wouldn't even be alive if you hadn't been there back then, when I...when things," Ian's eyes were filling with tears. Mickey never could stand to see Ian floundering for words like this, trying to catch his feelings and put them into words. He moved closer to Ian on the couch and put his hand over his.

 

 

 

 

"Hey, hey, it's okay. I know what you were going through, and why you couldn't tell me what I wanted to hear. It was only fair, for years before that I knew what you wanted to say but I wasn't ready to hear it," Mickey said. "I mean it when I say the past is in the past and I'm not going to waste one minute of my second chance regretting anything we can't change now anyways."

"Can you at least let me say it once?" Ian asked, his eyes still full of tears.

"Yeah?" Mickey said, not sound too sure. He didn't need to hear Ian say he was sorry, there was nothing to be sorry for after all this time.

"I love you, Mickey."

Mickey almost fell off the couch. That was not what he was expecting. Neither was what came out of his mouth next.

"I love you too."

Just then there was a huge rumble of thunder, a loud crack, and then Merry's cry, wailing from upstairs. "DAAAAAAAAAADDDYYYYYYYYYYY!"

Ian jumped up from the couch and took the stairs two at a time. Merry was sitting up in bed crying and yelling and Ian swooped in and picked her up, cradling her to his chest.

"It's okay, baby, Daddy's here. I've got you, I won't let you go. It's just thunder, shhh, shhh. I'm right here." She was sobbing into his shoulder, her red curls all in tangles.

She finally quieted enough to say, "Where are we?"

"Mickey's house, honey, you remember? We came in here after swimming? You're in Yevgeny's room," Ian told her.

"Where's Yevgeny?" she demanded.

"Um, at his mommy's house, near our house, he's fine."

"Where's Mickey?" she asked.

"Right here, princess," Mickey answered from the doorway. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching Ian take care of his daughter.

Merry pulled herself upright and looked at her father. "You left me all alone and I didn't know where you were."

"I'm sorry. But you always know I'm right here, don't you?" he said, making a little X right over her heart with his pinky.

She looked down at her chest. "You are?" she said.

"I am, I promise," Ian said. He then looked over at Mickey. Mickey nodded.

"Who's hungry?" Mickey said. "I can make us some pizza roll ups and macaroni and cheese..."

"Me! I'm hungry, Mickey!" Merry squealed. Ian laughed and nuzzled her hair.

They had a delicious home cooked meal ("Maybe I'll look into cooking classes," Mickey said around a mouthful of mac n cheese) and then Ian said it was probably time to get Merry home. Mickey insisted on calling the Uber again and Ian was too worn out to try to mount a refusal. It had been a big day.

"Car will be here in about ten minutes, he just has to put the car seat in," Mickey told Ian, looking up from his phone. Merry was sitting on Ian's lap on the couch, playing with her neon monkey. Ian and Mickey just sat in companionable silence. When Mickey's phone alerted him the car was there, he walked Ian and Merry out. The rain had stopped and the world seemed cooler, at least for now. It was almost full dark now, but of course Mickey's condo complex was well lit.

"What do you say to Mickey?" Ian asked his daughter, who he was still holding before putting her in the car seat.

"Thank you!" she chirped. "Thank you for supper, and for swimming!"

"You're welcome, Merry. Any time." Mickey replied.

"Kiss me goodnight," she demanded sweetly.

Mickey grinned and gave her a peck on the cheek. "Good night, princess."

She kissed him back, planting a wet messy kiss on the top of his cheekbone. "Good night, Mickey. Now kiss Daddy."

"Er..." Mickey looked at Ian, who just smiled. Mickey gave Ian an even quicker peck on the cheek than he had given Merry. "Good night, Ian," he said. Ian distractedly kissed the cheek Merry hadn't used on Mickey back.

"Uh, night, Mick. Thanks for everything." Ian carefully put Merry into the car seat and then quickly walked around the car to get in on the other side of the backseat with her. He didn't look at Mickey once.

Merry slept well that night, but her daddy didn't.  He tossed and turned in the heat, and kept replaying the day's events over and over in his head.  He was a grumpy bear in the morning to everyone but his daughter as he got himself ready for work and Merry ready for her day.  Fiona had the day off so she was going to take care of Merry instead of Merry having to go to daycare, but Ian still liked to get Merry dressed and fed before he had to leave. 

 

Ian was only speaking to his daughter, everyone else moving through the Gallagher kitchen for breakfast was being ignored or glared at if they attempted to engage him in conversation.  Fiona figured he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed after getting a bad night's sleep in his hot room and took it in stride. 

 

"So, Vee and me figure we'll take the kids to a movie this afternoon when they get home from day camp, get them in some air conditioning out of the heat," Fiona said, just to keep Ian informed. 

 

He grunted to let her know he heard. 

 

Fiona turned to her niece.  "You'd like that, huh, sweetface?  Seeing a movie with Vee and her little girls?"

 

"Will Yevgeny come too?" Merry asked, her big green blue eyes lighting up. 

 

"Well, yeah, if he's over there with Svetlana.  I bet he'll come too," Fiona said.

 

"Yay!" said Merry.

 

"Yay!" replied Fiona.  She turned to her brother.  "Didn't she only meet him once?  She's real good with his name-Kev still mangles it half the time.  That little Milkovich must have made quite the impression."

 

"Gotta go," Ian mumbled to his sister.  "Bye, Merry.  Be a good girl for Auntie Fiona."  He kissed her curly head. 

 

Ian pulled out his wallet and put a twenty down on the table.  "For the movie," he said, not looking at Fiona as he walked by her to get out of the house.  Any other time she would've told him to keep it and that the movie and snacks were on her, but she had the feeling he'd bark at her if she tried, and she knew he'd then feel bad about being "mean" in front of the toddler, so she just let it be.  Something was bugging him, but she knew she'd have to wait and hope for an opportune time to discuss it with him. 

 

Towards the end of Ian's shift (which wasn't a bad shift but he still had a bitch of a day anyhow), he called Fiona to check in. 

 

"Hey, Ian, how was your day?" Fiona asked brightly. 

 

"Don't ask," Ian warned.  "How was the movie?  How's Merry?  Is she doing all right?"

 

"Yup, she loved the movie, all the kids did-Yev got to come too.  And when we got back to Vee's, Kev had gone out and got a bunch of window air conditioners and put them upstairs and downstairs over here.  We've been invited to sleep over, if that's okay with you.  Us girls are going to build a fort in the living room," Fi told him. 

 

"You sure you don't mind watching her all night?" Ian said. 

 

"Of course I don't mind!  She's no trouble at all, and the a/c is going to feel so goooooood," Fiona laughed.  "Merry, come say Hi to your daddy.  He said we can sleep over!"  There were general cheers in the background and then Merry's happy little voice came over the phone.

 

"Hi, Daddy!  Thanks for letting me sleep over.  Good night!" and then she handed the phone back to her aunt. 

 

"Fiona, could you put her back on, please?  She didn't let me say anything."  Fiona could hear the smile in her brother's voice and was glad.  She knew Merry had that effect on him.

 

"Hi, honey," Ian said, after Merry said hello again.  "You be good over there, and I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

 

"Okay, Daddy!  Bye!"  Merry was off and running again.  She wanted to get back with the other kids.

 

"You good now, or do you need me to corral her again?" Fi asked when she held the phone back up to her ear.  She could tell Ian hadn't gotten much time to say anything on his end.

 

"Naw, I'm good.  I'm glad she's so happy about staying over there.  Just be sure to kiss her goodnight for me, okay?" Ian said.

 

"Of course.  We'll see you in the morning, okay?"

 

"But, call me if you need me for any reason...I might not go straight home after my shift," Ian said.

 

"Yeah, of course.  But don't worry, this isn't any different from you working an overnight shift to Merry-except this time she gets to be at her first sleepover," Fiona said.

 

"Yeah, I know.  She's in good hands.  Thanks, Fi." 

 

After they hung up, Ian thought for a minute, then texted Mickey asking if they could talk. 

 

Ian went to Mickey's place, taking the El this time.  He texted again when he was close, and was surprised that Mickey was waiting for him at the gate to let him in, rather than just calling his name down to the guy in the gate house.  Mickey looked good, he was just wearing a pair of loose jeans and a white v neck t-shirt, so, nothing special, but there was something about the look on his face as he watched Ian approach.  Ian couldn't help but look right back at him.  Ian had changed at work so he wasn't in his uniform.  He was wearing some old khakis and a white tank top with an unbuttoned plaid short sleeve shirt over it. 

 

Mickey opened the door next to the driveway gate open for Ian with a big smile and clasped his hand to Ian's shoulder. 

 

"Dennis, this is Ian-Ian, Dennis," Mickey said, introducing Ian to the man from the gate house.  "Hopefully you'll be seeing him around here, so if ever he turns up, please be sure and let him in, okay?"

 

Dennis shook Ian's hand and gave Mickey a big smile.  "Sure thing, Mickey.  Nice to meet you, sir." 

 

Ian looked a bit dazed, but smiled shyly and said hello and nice to meet you too.  Mickey still had his hand on Ian's shoulder.

 

Mickey nodded and they started walking up the driveway.  Mickey let his hand drop, and Ian realized he missed the feel of it as soon as it was gone. 

 

Mickey let them into his condo and was just about to offer Ian something to eat or drink when Ian blurted out, "Why didn't you kiss me last night?"

 

Mickey was taken aback.  "What, when?”

  
"When I was leaving-when Merry told you to.  Why.  Didn't.  You.  Kiss.  Me?" Ian said, his patience all but gone after a night and a day of worrying over this.

 

"When you were leaving?"  Mickey was trying to remember.  For his part, all day long and all of last night in his big lonely bed all he had been thinking about was being near Ian before the thunder scared Merry. He thought for a moment.  Oh, now he knew what Ian meant.  "Out by the car?"  Ian nodded.  "Ian, I didn't know if you wanted Merry being exposed to full on affection right in front of her like that.  She was in your arms after all."

 

Ian waited a moment, but Mickey was just looking at him with raised eyebrows like he was waiting to hear what Ian would say next. 

 

Ian’s thoughts were just a big jumble, and he didn’t know what he wanted to say first. What he finally came out with was, “Did you mean it, when you said you love me?” It was, after all, what was most important.

 

Mickey’s eyes and voice were soft. “I meant it.” He took two steps to be right in front of Ian and he looked up at him, searching his eyes. “Ian, I’ve wanted to kiss you since the park, but the kids-“

 

“So it’s gonna be like that again?” Ian said, taking a step back.

 

“Like what?” Mickey was confused. How could anything to do with the kids be “again”? They only had Yevgeny before, and he was a baby when Mickey went away.

 

“Like you’re not going to be out, like no one can know you’re gay?” Ian blurted.

 

“Ian,” Mickey said, his voice gentle again, “I told you, I’m not wasting one more minute of my life. I’m ready to be out and proud and if you wanted to bang on the fifty yard line of Soldier Field during halftime at a playoff game, I’d do it. I just meant with the kids, maybe we should know where we are in our relationship before we show them anything that might give them the idea we’re further ahead than you’re ready for?”

 

“That I’m ready for?” Ian scoffed. “What about what you’re ready for?”

 

“Ian, I’m ready to be wherever you want me to be-we can take things slow, start over from square one if you want, or pick up like we never left off, or go back to the day where we left off and start rebuilding from there, or even trying something altogether different if you have any ideas-whatever. I’m willing to go fast or slow or anything in between, depending on what you want.”

 

“I want…I want to be back in your arms,” Ian said, looking right into Mickey’s eyes. “I missed them.”

 

Mickey held his arms open straight out at his sides. “I’m right here, Ian. Come on.”

 

Ian stepped into Mickey’s embrace and they finally kissed. Heavy and hot and hungry, and they didn’t stop, just kept finding ways to get even closer and deeper into one another. Finally they had to break apart for air.

 

“Okay, good call on not doing that in front of the kids,” Ian said, dazed, but reaching for Mickey again. “I, uh, I don’t see the point in going back-we’ve both got kids, we both know you can’t hold back time for them even if you want to. I learned when Merry was born that she had my whole heart-except for the part that was yours. I had tried to ignore that part, but I knew I hadn’t given any of my heart away till that baby claimed the part that’s rightfully hers. But no one that I was with ever got close to winning me over, Mick. I wouldn’t let myself see it, but it was always you, the whole time. If we could, I wanna pick up from right here.”

 

By the fall, Ian and Merry had moved in with Mickey-turns out the room Mickey thought might make a good home office was actually much better suited to becoming a princess’ chamber. Mickey had shared custody of Yevgeny now, and he spent half his time at his dad’s and had started first grade. He’d been to his first book fair and discovered a Magic Treehouse book and the whole family got instantly hooked on the series.

 

It was the first truly frosty night of autumn. There was a cozy fire burning in the den’s fireplace, and Merry was on Ian’s lap with her neon monkey, and Yev was sitting on Mickey’s lap, his feet on Ian’s lap where Merry always left a space for them. Mickey was right up next to Ian, resting his head on his shoulder as Ian read the latest adventure of Jack and Annie to their little family. Ian wrapped his arm around Mickey as he read. He had to squeeze Mickey a bit every time he turned a page, but neither of them seemed to mind that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I want to shower my artist with thanks and praise for the adorable pictures she created for the story. As someone who can barely draw a stick figure, seeing what someone like crimsonswirls can do is like seeing real life magic happen. Every time she sent me pictures while we were working on this, my heart would pound and my smiles would take over my face. There's such a rush in seeing something original that's been created. I know I'm not explaining it well enough, but it's definitely something exciting and wonderful that happens.
> 
> I love ALL her pictures, especially the one of Merry's first smile and the beautiful warm glowing family portrait at the end. They are so wonderful!
> 
> And also once again I had to write Mickey out of jail, LOL. Dude never should have been there in the first place-there was no evidence!


End file.
